Being a visual sort, I like to put things into graphic form.
So
here
goes:

What you see here is "poor me" (or "poor you"), at the center of
enormous
forces. At top, we have history,
society, and culture, which
influence
us primarily through our learning as mediated by our families, peers,
the
media, and so on. At the bottom, we have evolution, genetics, and
biology, which influence us by means of our physiology
(including
neurotransmitters,
hormones, etc.) Some of the specifics most relevant to psychology
are instincts, temperaments, and health. As the nice, thick
arrows
indicate, these two mighty forces influence us strongly and
continuously,
from conception to death, and sometimes threaten to tear us apart.

There is, of course, nothing simple about these
influences.
If you will notice the thin arrows (a) and (b). These illustrate
some of the more roundabout ways in which biology influences our
learning,
or society influences our physiology. The arrow labeled (a) might
represent an aggressive temperament leading to a violent response to
certain
media messages that leads to a misunderstanding of those
messages.
Or (b) might represent being raised with a certain set of
nutritional
habits that lead to a physiological deficiency in later
life.
There are endless complexities.

I also put in a number of little arrows, marked (c). These
represent accidental influences,
physiological or experiential. Not
everything
that happens in our environment is part of some great historical or
evolutionary
movement! Sometimes, stuff just happens. You can be in the
wrong place at the wrong time, or the right place at the right
time:
Hear some great speaker that changes the direction of your life away
from
the traditional path, or have a cell hit by stray radiation in just the
wrong way.

Last, but not least, there's (d), which represents our own
choices, the idea that, beyond society and biology and accident,
sometimes my
behavior
and experience is caused by... me!

Let's start by looking at what some of the theorists of the past have
said.

Alfred Adler

Adler
said that your lifestyle
(personality) is "not merely a
mechanical
reaction." This makes Adler considerably different from Freud.
For
Freud, the things that happened in the past, such as early childhood
trauma,
determine what you are like in the present. Adler sees motivation as a
matter of moving towards the future, rather than being driven,
mechanistically,
by the past. We are drawn towards our goals, our purposes, our ideals.
This is called teleology, and
the idea goes all the way back to
Aristotle.

Moving things from the past into the future has some dramatic
effects.
Since the future is not here yet, a teleological approach to motivation
takes the necessity out of things. In a traditional mechanistic
approach,
cause leads to effect: If a, b, and c happen, then x, y, and z must, of
necessity, happen. But you don't have to reach your goals or meet your
ideals, and they can change along the way. Teleology acknowledges that
life is hard and uncertain, but it always has room for change!

A major influence on Adler's thinking was the philosopher Hans
Vaihinger, who wrote a book called The Philosophy of "As If."
Vaihinger
believed that ultimate truth would always be beyond us, but that, for
practical
purposes, we need to create partial truths. His main interest was
science,
so he gave as examples such partial truths as protons and electrons,
waves
of light, gravity as distortion of space, and so on. Contrary to what
many
of us non-scientists tend to assume, these are not things that anyone
has
seen or proven to exist: They are useful constructs. They work for the
moment, so let us do more science, and hopefully will lead to better,
more
useful
constructs. We use them "as if" they were true. He called these partial
truths fictions.

Vaihinger, and Adler, pointed out that we use these fictions in day
to day living as well. We behave as if we knew the world would be here
tomorrow, as if we were sure what good and bad are all about, as if
everything
we see is as we see it, and so on. Adler called this fictional
finalism.
You can understand the phrase most easily if you think about an
example:
Many people behave as if there were a heaven or a hell in their
personal
future. Of course, there may be a heaven or a hell, but most of us
don't
think of this as a proven fact. That makes it a "fiction" in
Vaihinger's
and Adler's sense of the word. And finalism refers to the teleology of
it: The fiction lies in the future, and yet influences our behavior
today.

Gordon
Allport

One thing that motivates human beings is the tendency to satisfy
biological
survival needs, which Allport
referred
to as opportunistic
functioning.
He noted that opportunistic functioning can be characterized as
reactive,
past-oriented, and, of course, biological.

But Allport felt that opportunistic functioning was relatively
unimportant
for understanding most of human behavior. Most human behavior, he
believed, is motivated by something very different - functioning in a
manner expressive of the self - which he called propriate
functioning.
Most of what we do in life is a matter of being who we are!
Propriate
functioning can be characterized as proactive, future-oriented, and
psychological.

Propriate comes from the word proprium,
which is Allport’s
name
for that essential concept, the self. He defines it as the
aspects of your experiencing that you see as most essential (as
opposed to incidental or accidental),
warm
(or “precious,” as opposed to emotionally cool), and
central
(as opposed to peripheral). He had reviewed hundreds of
definitions for that concept and came to feel that, in order to more
scientific,
it would be necessary to dispense with the common word self and
substitute
something else. For better or worse, the word proprium never
caught
on.

To get an intuitive feel for what propriate functioning means, think
of the last time you wanted to do something or become something because
you really felt that doing or becoming that something would be
expressive
of the things about yourself that you believe to be most
important.
Remember the last time you did something to express your self, the last
time you told yourself, “that’s really me!” Doing things in
keeping
with what you really are, that’s propriate functioning.

Existentialism

The Danish philosopher Søren
Kierkegaard once compared us with God and, of course, found us
lacking.
God is traditionally understood as being omniscient, omnipotent, and
eternal.
We, on the other hand, are abysmally ignorant, pitifully powerless, and
all too mortal. Our limitations are clear.

We often wish we could be more like God, or at least like angels.
Angels,
supposedly, are not as ignorant or powerless as we are, and they are
immortal!
But, as Mark Twain pointed out, if we were angels, we wouldn't
recognize
ourselves. Angels do nothing but God's bidding. They can't help it.
They
simply live out God's plan for them, and for eternity no less!

Tables are more like angels than we are. Tables have a nature, a
purpose,
an essence, that we have given them. They are there to serve us in a
certain
way, like angels are there to serve God.

Chipmunks are like this, too. They also have a plan, a blueprint,
if
you like, in their genetics. They do what their instincts instruct them
to do. They seldom require career counseling.

It may be dull to be an angel, or a table, or a chipmunk, but it
sure
is easy! You could say that their essences
come before their
existences:
What they are comes before what they do.

But, say existentialists, this is not true for us. "Our
existences
precede our essences," as French philosopher Jean-Paul
Sartre put it. I don't know what I'm here
for until I've lived my life. My life, who I am, is not determined by
God,
by the laws of Nature, by my genetics, by my society, not even by my
family.
They each may provide the raw material for who I am, but it is how I
choose
to live that makes me what I am. I create myself.

If the scientist is the model of humanity for George Kelly and
cognitive
psychologists, the artist is the model for existentialists.

You could say that the essence of humanity - the thing that we all
share, and makes us distinct from anything else in the world - is our
lack of essence, our "no-thing-ness," our freedom. We cannot be
captured by a philosophical system or a psychological theory; we cannot
be reduced to physical and chemical processes; our futures cannot be
predicted
with social statistics. Some of us are men, some are women; some are
black,
some are white; some come from one culture, some from another; some
have
one imperfection, some another. The "raw materials" differ
dramatically,
but we all share the task of making ourselves.

Free-will
vs determinism

The concept of free will has undergone some hard times lately.
The obvious success of science, and the materialistic, deterministic,
reductionistic
assumptions that usually accompany it, have made free will seem
old-fashioned,
associated more with scholastic theologians than modern men and
women.
But I find the concept impossible to ignore, much less dispose of.

Let’s begin by saying what free will is, and what it isn’t.
Free
will is not the same as freedom of action. Freedom of action
refers
to things that prevent a willed action from being realized. For
example,
being in prison means you are not free to paint the town red.
Being
in a straight jacket means you are not free to wave hello. Being
paralyzed means not being able to move your limbs. These are not
issues of free will. Free will means being free to try to escape
(or not), to try to wave (or not), to try to move your limbs (or not).

Neither is free will the same as political or social freedom (better
known as liberty). Just because you will be executed for taking
the
local dictator’s name in vain, doesn’t mean you aren’t free to try, or
even free to actually do so. You’ll just wind up paying for the
satisfaction.

And one thing free will is certainly not is "willpower". "Willpower"
is a mythical power some people claim to have and like tell other
people they should have. In reality, it is just a matter of one motive
out-weighing another. The runner runs his marathon despite the pain and
exhaustion, not because he has some special power, but because he likes
to demonstrate his prowess more than he likes being pain-free. The
model restricts her diet to salad despite her hunger, not because she
has a powerful will, but because she values appearance over satiety.
These folks may tell the fat man that he should just use his
"willpower" and start dieting and exercising, when in fact he has been
doing exactly the same thing that they have been doing. In his case,
his desire for food and rest outweigh his desire for health and long
life. Telling him to use his "willpower" is like telling a diabetic to
start producing insulin.

On the other side of the argument, I need to point out that
determinism
is not the same thing as fatalism, destiny, or predestination.
Determinism
means that the way things are at one moment is the necessary result of
the ways things were the moment before. It means that every
effect
has its cause, and that nothing, not even the will, is exempt. It
does not mean that the future is already established.

Let’s run through some arguments for free will, followed by the
determinist’s
responses. Since the free willist is making a claim, and an
exceptional
one at that, the burden of proof is on him or her.

First, there is the experience argument. I experience
something
within myself that I understand as making choices, and that those
choices
are not determined by anything other than myself.

The determinist will respond that you are simply not aware of the
causes
of your decisions, and have labeled that ignorance “free will.”
There
were no doubt neurons firing and chemicals sailing across synapses and
so forth, all very deterministically resulting in my choice of the
danish.

The free willist might suggest that belief is a crucial part of free
will. If you were to set me up with the danish and the muffin,
knowing
that I tend to choose danishes, you might very well say the end result
was determined. But if I knew you were trying to prove your
point,
I would simply choose the muffin instead, or neither.

The determinist would simply say that this extra tidbit of knowledge
-- that I am trying to fool you -- has replaced your usual causal
factors.
Instead, you are reacting, quite mechanically, to a threat to your
beliefs.

Maybe so, says the free willist. But you must admit that I can
be awfully random at times. I can suddenly jump out of my chair
and
scream “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too” at the top of my lungs. Let’s
see you predict something like that!

The determinist would respond that indeterminism is far from free
will.
If that’s all there is to free will, then a roulette wheel is better at
it than you are.

But I am unpredictable, says the free willist.

The determinist would point out that that is merely a practical
problem,
not a philosophical one. The fact that I cannot pin point the
precise
location and velocity, say, of all the particles in the universe,
doesn’t
mean that you aren’t determined by them. In fact, even if that
were
theoretically impossible (as suggested by the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle),
it only means I can’t predict, not that you have free will!

The free willist may point out that, without free will, morality has
no meaning. All the best things about people -- generosity,
bravery,
compassion -- have no meaning. If we are as determined as falling
bricks, then Adolph Hitler could no more be blamed for his evil actions
than Mother Teresa could be praised for her good ones. What then
of our world?

Simple, says the determinist. We will have to live without
morality.
Many people are already moral relativists, or even moral
nihilists.
Our societies can get along just fine with laws and judicial processes
and prisons using nothing more than tradition, majority self-interest,
reciprocity, and the rule of cover-your-ass. Maybe that’s all
morality
has ever been!

Another argument a free willist can make is that we have this unique
ability to stop and think about a decision-making situation. We
can
exit the stream of cause-and-effect for a moment. We pause before
the high-calorie meal to consider the advisability of diving in.
Animals rarely do this: If a hungry lion has an antelope before
her,
she eats. And we can postpone the decision as long as we
like.
Even if the actual choice we make at some particular moment in time is
determined, the length of time we wait for that moment to arrive is
not.

Or is it? says the determinist. What caused you to wait
exactly
one minute before choosing? Or what caused you to stop your
pausing
and jump into things at just that moment? Besides, isn’t this
pause
just a matter of two forces of equal strength short-circuiting the
normal
processes?

Jean-Paul Sartre came up with an interesting free will
argument.
He said that we can ignore something real and we can pretend something
unreal. For example, I could imagine that there is no danish
before
me -- something I often need to do in the service of dieting. Or
I can see the poppy seeds in the muffins as maggots. This imagination
is
a powerful thing! But the determinist would just say that
imagination
is just one more neurological mechanism, explainable by deterministic
principles.

I must point out that, although the free willist has not exactly won
any arguments so far, the determinist has put himself in a somewhat
more
defensive position. Some of that “burden of proof” is moving over
to the determinist side. For example, he has claimed that
imagination
is something physical. That is a claim that we need not just
accept:
We can challenge him to demonstrate the validity of the claim.

Another possible foundation for free will is creativity. I can
create a new option. I am not stuck with the cheese danish or the
poppy seed muffin. I can throw them both and choose a bag of
cheesy
puffs. Or I can literally create a new concoction: Get out
my mixing bowls and bake something no one has ever seen before, such as
a poppy seed danish or a cheese muffin. Or I can get out my
blender
and make a muffin and danish slurpy.

Of course, the determinist, becoming rather tiresome by now, would
just
say that creativity is just a word we use to label unconscious neural
events
that surprise even us -- an accident. If someone steps on your
danish
and muffin by accident, no one would think to call the wad on the
bottom of his shoe a new creation!

(Of course, the determinist is claiming now that creativity is
mechanical
-- something he could be challenged to defend.)

So, how about differentiating between causes and reasons? When
I get myself a Big Mac, is it cause-and-effect determinism that led me
there? Did the growling in my stomach force me into my car, the
sight
of the golden arches make me jerk my steering wheel in their
direction?
Or did I notice my appetite and conceive a plan: Look through my
repertoire of gastronomic delights, I decide on a Big Mac, drive
purposefully
to the golden arches, and order what I want? Was I, in other
words,
“pushed from behind” by causes, or did I follow my reasons?

This is Aristotle's teleology and Adler's fictional finalism and
Allport's propriate functioning.
Instead of reacting to stimuli, we
project
a future situation which we take as a goal. The connection
between
cause-and-effect is one of necessity. There is nothing necessary
about purposes. They can be accomplished - or not.

But the determinist would respond with the same argument he made
with
imagination and creativity: Your perceptions and cognitions and
emotions,
your past experiences, inevitably lead to your projecting that goal and
working toward it. It only appears to you to be free of
necessity.
But note how quickly we give up our goals when other, more powerfully
supported
forces push in upon us.

One last try for free will: I suggest that, as we develop from
babies into adults, we separate from the world. Our causal
processes
become increasingly independent of the causal processes outside of us,
especially in the mental realm. A gap develops that allows us to
be influenced by outside situations, but not determined by them.
This gap is like a large river: The man on the opposite bank can
wave and jump and yell all he wants -- he cannot directly affect
us.
But we can listen to him or interpret his semaphore signals. We
can
treat his antics as information to add to all the information we have
gathered
over our lives, and use that information to guide our decisions --
influenced,
but not caused.

The baby begins life nearly as intimately connected with his or her
world as in the womb. As we develop from babies into adults, we
gradually separate ourselves from the world. Our interior causal
processes - especially mental processes - become increasingly
independent of the causal processes outside of us. A gap develops
that
allows us to be influenced by outside situations, but not necessarily
determined by them.

By the end of life, some of us are nearly impervious to what others
think about us, can rise above nearly any threat or seductive promise,
can ignore nearly any kind of urge or pain. We are still
determined -
but little in our immediate situation is more than information we
utilize in making our decisions. In one sense, we are
still determined -- determined by that developing person we are,
determined
by our selves. But nothing else in our present circumstances, or
even in our past going way back to some time in childhood when that gap
was first fully realized, is more than information to utilize in making
free decisions.

This gap is like a large river: The man on the opposite bank
can
wave
and jump and yell all he wants -- he cannot directly affect us.
But we
can listen to him or interpret his semaphore signals. We can
treat his
antics as information to add to all the information we have gathered
over our lives, and use that information to influence our decisions --
influence, but not cause.

I know very well that the determinist can respond to this idea as
well.
But now he is as much on the defensive as the free willist has ever
been.
In fact, the undecided listener may begin to conclude that it is the
deterministic
stance -- nothing is free! -- that is the more extreme, less reasonable
one.

The argument of free will versus determinism is in some measure a false
one. Both sides have been reduced to straw men (easily destroyed
arguments) by oversimplification. As I mentioned at the start,
free will has
never meant freedom to ignore the laws of nature, and determinism does
not mean everything is predictable. Perhaps the best thing we can
do to get past the stalemate is to develop a new concept that points to
the complexity of the person and his or her interaction with the
world. Instead of free will versus determinism, maybe we should
adopt Albert Bandura's preferred term: Self-determination.

As a middle-aged man, I have dozens of years of experiences - my
childhood, my cultural inheritance, the books I've read, conversations
with friends, my own thoughts - that have made me who I am
today. All this is on top of my unique genetics and other
physical realities of who I am. The things that happen to me now are experienced through this mass of uniqueness,
and my responses depend, not only on my present situation, but on all
that I am. This may not
be "free will" in the absolute sense, but it is certainly
self-determination.

It should never be forgotten, however, that this freedom is extremely
limited! Biology, society, and circumstances are far, far more powerful.

If we possess this (limited) freedom, we also posses a
(limited) responsibility for our actions. For most
adults, it can be legitimately claimed that who we are includes basic
moral concepts and a rational respect for law conveyed to us by our
parents and others. These things are a part of who we are, and
are available to us when we make a choice to behave one way or
another. We are
therefore culpable if we disregard these moral and legal
concepts.
This dovetails nicely into the legal
tradition that asks whether or not a person actually knows right from wrong, and whether
the person has the maturity or the cognitive wherewithall to choose right over wrong.

In other words, we don't have to be "above" the natural world in
order to have a degree of freedom within that world.